By the 1750s, improvements in the post service helped stimulate newspaper subscriptions and, for the first time, some newspapers realized circulations north of one thousand. Unfortunately, not all subscribers paid. According to Isaacson’s biography of Benjamin Franklin, James Parker, the printer of the New York Gazette, reported in 1759 that at least a quarter of his subscribers failed to pay. The April 7, 1755, issue of the New York Gazette (shown above) features a proclamation inviting American colonists to enlist and fight in the French and Indian War — “for the Service and Defence [sic] of his Majesty’s Colonies in North-America.”.
